


The Measure of Endurance

by what_alchemy



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gunplay, M/M, Object Insertion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-17
Updated: 2011-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:00:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a First Class where President Kennedy never interrupted our boys’ satellite scene, Charles has to return Erik’s gun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Measure of Endurance

**Author's Note:**

> I made the graphic myself just because there's such a great shot of Charles with the gun. All information about said gun is from [the First Class page](http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/X-Men:_First_Class) on the Internet Movie Firearms Database.

  


 

It’s after ten o’clock and Charles is loitering outside Erik’s door. He has the M1911A1 on him. Erik can feel its essence tugging at his own, sure as the low beat of his own heart. No doubt Charles is fretting about the pistol being in his possession and wishes to return it to its owner, and any other day, Erik might be chagrined at his friend’s naïveté, his damnable missishness. But today is not any other day. Today in the core of Erik’s self is a warm kernel of peace, and Charles gave that to him. He is only grateful, and humbled, and battling a rising thrum of desire he’s still not sure is reciprocated.

Erik props himself against the headboard and sets his book down on the bedside table. He pulls his knees up to brace his elbows against them. He knows he doesn’t need to pitch his voice loudly to be heard from the other side of that door; he doesn’t need to speak at all.

“Come in if you’re coming in, Charles,” he says anyway.

The heavy door creaks open and his friend, diminutive though he is, fills the space of Erik’s bedroom with his presence. Contrary to Erik’s expectations, Charles is wholly self-possessed before him, upright, arms relaxed at his side. He holds the M1911A1 loosely against his thigh, and Erik’s breath catches to see those blue eyes burn. Erik sits up a little straighter.

“Charles?”

“Erik, my friend,” Charles says in that mild tone of his even as those eyes pin him to the bed. “It seems I’ve made off with one of your possessions.”

Erik raises a hand to command the pistol to himself, but he’s not forceful with it and Charles’s hand clasped on its grip counters his will enough to keep the bid unsuccessful. Erik raises his eyebrows but drops his hand. The smile he sends his friend is a bit lazy, a bit flirtatious. But Charles is not one of his wispy Berlin boys; Charles is power and mercy and salvation, and sometimes Erik thinks he might weep from the beauty of him. Charles steps up to the foot of Erik’s bed.

“Why do you own this?” Charles asks him. He holds the gun outstretched in his palm, smooth black metal gleaming. “Certainly there are more devastating weapons at your disposal.”

 _Ellis Island, 1949. Erik is the tired, the poor — and certainly the wretched refuse. He should feel hope at the sight of that welcoming torch. He should feel relief. He should feel anything but this yawning emptiness that hollows his chest. The handgun he nicked off a man in Munich is heavy, concealed against his hip. The metal is cool there, and later, it is cool where he presses it against his temple, the soft underside of his chin. Cool in his hand, trigger in the crook of his index finger. Cool and unforgiving._

Charles has not insinuated himself into Erik’s mind like an unwelcome guest, but still Erik answers with the truth.

“It is a reminder,” he says, “of what I have conquered.”

Charles pulls the pistol back to himself, fingers convulsive around the grip. “Oh, Erik,” he sighs. He sits down on the edge of Erik’s bed, half turned to face him. The gun is inert on the sheets, Charles’s hand a sentinel atop it. Erik meets Charles’s gaze, meets the familiar compassion there. “There has been so much to conquer.”

“I am the stronger for it,” Erik says. He will not have Charles’s pity. But Charles’s smile is slow and smoldering, and, pistol in hand, he reaches out and touches Erik’s ankle through his sweatpants, a warm weight barely there. In Erik’s testicles is a knowing spark.

“Your strength, my friend, need not rely on such symbols of brutality.” Charles shifts closer, and Erik can smell him, the dark tones of masculinity beneath clean soap faded from the day’s exertions. With his free hand, Charles cups Erik’s cheek, rubs the pad of his thumb over a cheekbone. Erik shudders at the gentle touch. “You are far greater than the measure of endurance.” He leans in and presses his red lips to Erik’s own mouth, soft but firm, chaste but infinitely rousing.

Erik’s breath leaves him and he presses closer to Charles. He brings his hands up to cradle Charles’s head, to angle him back and deepen their maddening point of contact, but Charles stands fast and gives no ground. He opens his mouth and his tongue sweeps forward to tangle with Erik’s, and then Erik is the one giving ground, groaning as he lets Charles cover him, lets him press his body into the bed with his deceptive weight and solidity.

Erik wishes he could be closer to Charles as he hugs him tight about those broad shoulders. Wishes they could merge when their clothes come off and the wiry, sturdy length of him is pressed against Erik’s own long lines, skin and hair, tongue and teeth, adoration and wonder. In Erik’s mind is the breezy ricochet of Charles’s amusement and warm affections. And his lust, a licking flame.

“I’ve wanted this,” Charles says into Erik’s mouth. Erik swallows the words and lets his legs fall open around Charles’s hips. He has never given of himself this way before; he has always taken, and rarely given care to tenderness, but there is an unnameable yearning in him now to lay himself bare at Charles’s altar, to be open and utterly without pretense before his dearest — his only — friend. His lover.

“It’s what I’ve wanted as well, Charles,” he says, brushing his hand down the sleek line of Charles’s back. He cups the downy buttocks, gives them a gentle squeeze. Charles bestows upon him long, thorough kisses that leave him dizzy and aching for more. Erik can’t help but to buck up, cock against cock. He pushes a hand between them to grip both erections and gasps at the sensation of Charles’s steely length against his own. Charles takes the opportunity to draw back and regard him with half-lidded eyes, violet dark as the midnight sky. He gropes about beside Erik with one hand, and when it appears again, the M1911A1 dangles from his fingers like a discarded trophy.

“Tell me to keep this,” Charles says softly. Erik’s hand stills on their shafts, Charles’s foreskin pulled down to expose the tender pink head of his glans. Thoughts of swallowing that cock evaporate, and Erik furrows his brow. In Charles’s eyes is a banked fire.

“Charles…”

“Haven’t you done enough conquering, Erik?” Charles shifts enough that he is kneeling now, though his cock remains rampant in Erik’s slackened grasp. “Won’t you let me bear some of your burden with you?”

Erik swallows with some difficulty. Inside himself, some great swell of tension breaks and ebbs away, and in its place is only Charles Xavier.

“Yes,” he whispers.

Charles exhales and settles back on top of him. He tangles his free hand in Erik’s hair and kisses him again, hot and sloppy and perfect. “Say it,” he murmurs into the skin of Erik’s neck when he roves down his body. “I have to hear the words.”

“It’s yours, Charles.” _This gun, this body, this battered heart._ Charles hums out his approval and begins to map Erik’s skin with his hungry mouth. Here is the ridge of Erik’s collarbone, here is the whorl of crisp hair above his pectoral. Here is a raised, silvery scar, and here is another, small and puckered and red. Here is Erik’s tiny nipple, an unresponsive nub of flesh. Here is the line of hair that follows down his torso. Here are his abdominal muscles, rippling under Charles’s devastating touch. Erik’s breath is ragged and drags across his larynx to produce small, needy sounds, but Erik is beyond shame. How could he feel shame when it’s Charles above him, Charles’s tongue on his skin, Charles’s eyes beneath sooty lashes, Charles’s voice in his head saying _Erik, my friend, my darling, let me do this for you_? Erik tangles his fingers in Charles’s recalcitrant hair. He hopes his touch conveys all that he feels, because neither word nor thought are forthcoming, and there is so much he can’t articulate.

Suddenly the M1911A1 is there, heavy on Erik’s chest as Charles holds it only loosely. The barrel is as cool as he remembers, chilling as an ill-made promise, and Erik gasps, his eyes snapping open and his insides flipping over even as his cock jerks under Charles’s body. Charles’s eyes flick up, and in Erik’s head is his voice. _Let me?_

“Always,” Erik breathes. Charles’s gaze is like an anchor and Erik cannot look away as Charles drags the barrel of the gun down Erik’s ribcage with just enough pressure to make him squirm, if he were a weaker man. But Erik has never been accused of weakness, so he bears the maddening touch of the gun on his skin. By the tug of it on the edges of his own awareness, Erik knows it’s loaded; he loaded it himself just earlier today before running off to find Charles, to demand that Charles place this weapon against his forehead and pull the trigger. He knows he could stop the bullet’s momentum if Charles were to pull the trigger now, just as surely as he knows Charles will not. Charles, he knows with sudden and absolute certainty, will never set out to hurt him. With the bite of the front site on his side like the scrape of teeth, Erik is thrown headlong into a foreign sensation: trust.

He moans and Charles runs the barrel over his torso to his tender diaphragm. Charles’s face is buried in Erik’s pubic hair, and he nuzzles and snuffles into the juncture of thigh and body as if the scent intoxicates and enthralls him; maybe it does. Erik spares a moment for the wild thought that this heady and overpowering feeling, this overwhelming swell of desire and possessiveness and need, is matched in Charles, and it’s something rare and great, with the potential to exalt or destroy. With Charles’s hot tongue lapping at the base of his cock, Erik does not contemplate the latter option.

Charles drags the barrel of the gun down to Erik’s navel and lets it alight on the shallow hollow just as he feeds himself Erik’s eager cock. Erik gives a strangled shout and his hand tightens at the base of Charles’s skull. Charles’s lips curve upward even as he bobs up the shaft of Erik’s cock, and Erik’s eyes flutter closed, his head falling back against the pillows.

“You are — an incubus,” Erik stutters, and Charles only hums around his mouthful and lazily drags the gun farther down, presses the barrel into the soft mound of Erik’s pubis. Erik arches and groans as Charles pumps his cock into his mouth and runs the pistol under his tightly drawn sac to nudge lightly between his testicles. The front site catches the delicate flesh just enough to sting, but Charles has a light touch and everything is a maddening sensory feast. The gun ventures lower, pushes into his perineum. Panting, Erik spreads his legs wider, and unbidden he gasps Charles’s name.

Charles gives Erik’s cock one last sucking kiss before he rises to his knees, hands and gun stroking over Erik’s cock, his haunches. They settle on Erik’s knees, and when Erik meets his lover’s gaze, it is with an assent to the unspoken question there.

“Turn over,” Charles murmurs, and so Erik does, and he sighs into the pillows, closing his eyes. _You are a gorgeous specimen, my friend,_ comes Charles’s voice in his head, _a feat of evolution like I’ve never seen_. Behind him there is a sigh of contentment, a reverent stroke of his cheeks, and then he feels the pistol’s shaft at the base of his spine. He doesn’t bother to contain the moan or the arch of his back, and Charles runs the barrel lightly up his spine until he stops between Erik’s shoulder blades. Erik thrusts helplessly into the bedding; that spot has always undone him. The cold lick of the metal falls away then, to be replaced by Charles’s pointed tongue, his nipping teeth. Erik scrabbles behind him to pull Charles down, hips to bum, cock to crack. He wants unity in consumption, he wants Charles to make them a single soaring thought even as their bodies meet in ardent collision. He pushes back into Charles, hoping his skin can tell the story his mouth can’t.

“Charles,” is all he says. Charles kisses down his back, pistol in his armpit, down his side, in the dimples above his arse. Charles is tracing the swells of his arse with the gun as his other hand kneads appreciatively, and when he parts Erik’s cheeks a fission of electricity sparks up Erik’s spine, pulses in his cock. He muffles a whimper and shoves a hand beneath himself to squeeze his erection.

“Lovely, lovely,” Charles says a bit dreamily, and Erik might laugh if he weren’t half out of his mind with arousal. A cool stream of breath blows over Erik’s hole and his eyes roll up. It’s a curious position to be in: vulnerable and open and a touch humiliating, and Charles could do anything to him. But Erik is warm and his blood is pounding and he raises himself up just a little, arches his back. He presents himself for Charles’s greedy eyes.

With two firm fingertips, Charles rubs at Erik’s hole and Erik’s breath grows more erratic. The gentle but insistent rubbing makes him feel like all his nerves are blazing; he’d had no idea it was like this. No idea that a simple touch could make him _want_ so.

“Just relax, love,” Charles says, and Erik thinks now that he would follow Charles to the ends of the earth if he would just keep touching his arse like that. From his own pile of discarded clothes Charles unearths a small tub, the contents of which ease the way as Charles pushes a gentle finger into Erik’s body. The feel of a single slim finger is nothing extraordinary, but it’s attached to Charles Xavier, and that thought alone sets Erik’s blood racing. Charles rubs his fingertip along Erik’s inner walls then, and rocks his finger in and out, and then Erik begins to see the appeal of this. This portion of his anatomy has been terribly neglected, and each touch is a profound pleasure unlike any he’s known before. Charles adds another finger, and the fit is tighter, the knuckles bigger as they pass through the ring of his anus, but the stretch is sweeter, fuller, more satisfying.

“Charles, yes,” he hisses, the sibilance elongated as he rises up and rocks back into Charles’s hand.

“Patience, my friend,” Charles says. _Just let me take care of you_.

There are twinges of pain when the third finger enters him, but it dulls into a bearable burn before draining wholly away when Charles stretches and rubs him from the inside and stimulates something that makes Erik’s vision dapple with starbursts. He’s fairly sure he made some kind of terribly undignified sound, but Charles is pressed against his back, kissing his neck, his free hand around Erik’s stomach, and he too is making desperate sounds like Erik is a special gift just for him. Erik’s cock bumps the pistol in Charles’s hand.

“One more, all right, love?”

Erik grunts his agreement, and then Charles draws back to tuck his smallest finger in with the others. Slick and careful, he pushes his bunch of fingers inside Erik’s arse.

“Bear down, Erik,” Charles murmurs, and Erik obeys. He bellows when the entire flat of Charles’s hand pops through the ring of muscle, and the feeling is positively incendiary. He feels full and whole and owned and marked — property of Professor Charles Xavier — and he shouts into the pillow. “There, love,” Charles says, voice full of awe. “God, you’re perfect, just like this.” Charles opens him up with shallow thrusts of his hand. Mindless but for the throb of his cock and his arse, Erik meets each thrust with unparalleled enthusiasm. Sex has never been like this for him — he’s quick and dirty and gets the job done, pausing only to get his breath back and zipper up in dingy hotels or club bathrooms or dank back alleys. This, he thinks, is nothing like sex at all. This is what is private and singular between himself and Charles alone. This will last beyond how long it will take for the sweat to cool. This is the red of Charles’s lips and the warmth of his arms around him. This is something Erik has never experienced before.

Charles pulls his fingers out and leans on his side to meet Erik’s eyes. He smiles at him, beautiful and merciful. Erik doesn’t care to imagine how he looks himself: sweatslick and red, hair askew, eyes unfocused. But Charles feathers kisses over his face like he’s a precious thing.

“You’re doing so well, love, bloody perfect.” he says and hefts the M1911A1 up in presentation. “Can you do me one favor?”

Erik nods; he doesn’t trust himself to speak because he will simply beg for Charles to claim him, and he’s not a begging man.

Charles holds out the pistol. “Smooth the front site down,” he says, “and anything else that might prove… uncomfortable.”

Erik blinks up at his lover. Charles only gives him a soft smile, eyes kind and dark and sure. Erik shifts to place a hand on the gun, and then like pouring water the pistol is smooth and edgeless, shining with intent. Charles’s smiles widens to a full-on grin, and he says, “Groovy.” That musters a laugh from the deeper recesses of Erik’s consciousness not occupied by his rampant erection, and Charles moves behind him again, the lubricant making a squelching sound under his ministrations. Erik is on his knees and elbows, and he bows his head low. He feels like a supplicant before a deity, and he trembles at the touch of Charles’s hand on the small of his back.

“Steady now,” Charles says, “and remember to bear down.”

The barrel of the gun is cool and covered in lubricant when Charles sets it against Erik’s loosened hole. The tip enters him quite easily but meets resistance at the second ring. Erik pushes out and then the gun slides in right up to the trigger. Erik presses his shoulders into the bed and gives a long, low groan; the barrel of the M1911A1 is neither as long nor as thick as the half a hand Charles had inside him just moments before, but somehow its shape and unrelenting hardness, its metallic inflexibility, make it a much more difficult penetration. It fills him, it stimulates him, but it’s on just the wrong side of pain and it’s not Charles. It’s not what he wants. But behind him Charles is stroking his back and murmuring soothing nonsense, and Erik can feel the wet slap of Charles’s neglected cock on his thighs. Whatever else, the gun up his arse is turning Charles on.

Erik closes his eyes and gives himself up to the sensation of Charles fucking him with his own pistol. His flagging erection twitches back to life and Erik grips it around the head with a thumb and two fingers — not too much pressure. And then, Charles Xavier is speaking to him, in his head or aloud he doesn’t know, but all of it’s filthy and it sends Erik’s heartbeat into a frantic staccato.

“Knew you could do it, love,” Charles says, “knew you could be just like this, arse open for me, trusting me. Look at you, made for this, you are, God, Erik, you’ve no idea.” And then the images flood his mind as if he can see from Charles’s eyes: himself, glistening and glorious, lean muscles working as he sends himself back onto the M1911A1, anus stretching obscenely, beautifully around it, and there like the picture’s heartbeat is the pulse of Charles’s desire, bright and hot and so pure, like everything about Charles. Charles’s ardor and the image and the gun in his arse and the press of it on his prostate all send Erik headlong into an unexpected orgasm that splatters the sheets beneath him and whites out his vision.

When he returns to himself, he’s half on his side and Charles’s cock is inside him, his face in his neck and his arms around him. Erik puts his own hands over Charles’s and tangles their fingers tight. Charles’s thrusts are hard and growing erratic.

“Can’t, can’t, can’t—” he’s panting, and Erik cranes around to kiss him hot and open.

“Just let it go, Charles,” he tells him when he pulls back, “I want it. Please.”

Charles gives a broken cry and his hips snap hard into Erik’s arse and then he stills, arms tightening around Erik as he shudders and groans behind him. Erik has one arm up and behind him to stroke through Charles’s sweaty hair, but he doesn’t care that the position is awkward, he doesn’t care that he might strain something. He and Charles have become something new and he wants to live in this moment for always. He wants to keep it sacred and separate from his pain and vengeance and the certainty of human prejudice. He wants to pretend it will never change.

Charles’s breath his hot and quick on the sweat on Erik’s back, and he hugs him harder, pulls him closer. When he reaches down to remove his softening penis from the confines of Erik’s spent body, Erik stops him with a hand on his wrist.

“Stay,” he says in a low voice. He can feel Charles swallow and nod. Charles settles in behind him, head on shoulder, arms around Erik’s middle, and they are still and silent in the aftermath. He and Erik breathe in tandem. Erik pretends, just for now, and Charles lets him.


End file.
